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House Guests

One of the reasons I built my new house the way I did was so I could have house guests, and now I have. Last Monday I was pleased to have friends John and Karel spend the night on their way back to Albuquerque. They had been marshaling at the PGA golf tournament in Phoenix, and since John is also the Southwest Region President for AFA, he uses the trip to also visit the four chapters in the state, including mine here in Sierra Vista.

Before they arrived, however, another visitor came. His name is Padraig, but like many Irishmen, he prefers to be called Patty. Patty’s an interesting sort. Rough-hewn. Despite my persistent requests, he insists on staying outside. “Sun or snow, rain or blow,” he says, “my place is out of doors, lad. I’ll be fine...

While this post is NOT about the circa 1970 British blues/rock band Ten Years After, it is about moving in and ten years after. I’ll answer the question, “After what?” a little later.

The last three weeks have been, well, chaotic. As I wrote last time, I was moving from the old house to the new one the way Johnny Cash built his Cadillac: “One piece at a time.” Which is a lot harder to do than it might seem. At least, it was for me. Not harder physically, although there was plenty of toting and hauling. In fact, with apologies to Ned Washington and Dimitri Tiomkin, I came up with my own version of the Rawhide theme:

Not that every week isn’t a “decision week,” but it seems this week has more to make than most. Bill sees the light at the end of the tunnel and, especially with another HOA deadline looming, wants to keep pushing to get this thing done. He’s not alone.

First up was the granite. Gage, our contact at Bedrosian’s Tile in Tucson, started pumping ideas for alternatives to the Blue Storm granite on Monday. My cousin Stephanie, who’s an interior designer in Dallas, also sent a few. And I poked around on the Bedrosian’s web site myself. A few were interesting but when we got to looking at what was actually in stock, as opposed to what the example picture showed, the “interesting” list headed toward “none of the above...

OK, sorry, I couldn’t resist. It was either that or borrowing the lines or titles from one of these songs:

Neil Diamond’s “Stones”

Queen’s “We Will Rock You”

Bob Dylan’s “Everybody must get stoned…”

Of course, The Rolling Stones’ “Only Rock ‘n Roll”

I’m sure there were others I could have named too.

What’s this all about? You may remember sometime back I wrote that when Edith and I had selected granite slabs for counter tops in the house, we had NO idea it would take so long before the house was ready for them. As a result, we didn’t reserve them, and because of that, the suppliers sold the pieces we’d picked. D’oh!

So now that we’re finally ready for the slabs, we had to go back to the suppliers and see what they had. OK, no problem, right?

The interior is beginning to look like a house! Last week, actually starting the week before, the interior got its first two coats of paint. “Agreeable gray” turned out to be an agreeable choice. Not white, exactly, but certainly not dim or dismal. It’s a color that will let others stand out.

The big news, though, is cabinets–in the kitchen, the pantry, the laundry, and the bathrooms. And what a difference they make! The kitchen went from this…

…to this…

…and this…

…and the island looking like this.

Here’s a peek inside the pantry.

And one into the laundry.

And in the master bath…

… those cabinets standing in the door into the closet will be towers on either side of the central mirror.

The lighting in these pictures isn’t so great because I was working only with ambient light...